Friday's Five Films: June 13, 2025
Another weekly roundup.
Pride Month continues and I think it only fits I’ve been watching a lot of gay films. But I think while watching these movies, something that comes to mind is that such stories don’t only put them front and center, but we’re seeing gay people who are just as messy as anyone else we know up close. I think that’s part of what makes incredible cinema, whether it be by way of a filmmaker like Pedro Almodóvar or Ang Lee, but such filmmakers tell stories which are very much in line with these sensibilities within the human mind.
Without further ado, these are Friday’s Five Films. If you like what you’re seeing here, remember to subscribe for a whole lot more.
#1: Blue (1993, Derek Jarman)
You might be asking: how is it that a movie featuring nothing more than a blue screen is one of the most moving cinematic experiences you can ever imagine? The answer is very simple. It’s because Blue is a final statement from its filmmaker, Derek Jarman, who was dying of AIDS and wanted to communicate everything that was going through his mind as his eyesight was slowly going away to being nothing more than just simply seeing blue. It’s a movie where there’s a clear effort to hang onto what once was there even as it’s going away—it’s all the more heartbreaking.
#2: Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee)
This is a movie that I think has only gotten better both with age and life experiences. After having coming out as a queer person to many people I know, I think that Brokeback Mountain is just one of the most heartbreaking love stories ever told. It’s heartbreaking because it’s not all that far-removed from many great stories about forbidden love, but it’s also a movie all about how these social standards keep people far apart from one another in an era where being gay would be frowned upon. Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist both have a very complex sexuality but I think that Brokeback Mountain captures how queerness isn’t defined solely by whom we love in private and in public, but it’s also very messy and tumultuous. That’s just human nature.
#3: Closet Monster (2015, Stephen Dunn)
Closet Monster is one of the most moving queer fables I’ve seen in recent memory. It also happens to be one of the most unique films I’d seen about the queer experience. I say this because it’s a movie taking the form of a children’s story of sorts, where gay people exist within “the closet” akin to the monsters who continually scare us at that point in our life. But that’s also what makes Closet Monster so heartbreaking, because it’s a movie all about how that homophobia ends up becoming internalized through our lives. And it sticks with us for all our life, no matter how much we try to let go of it.
#4: Liz and the Blue Bird (2018, Naoko Yamada)
Maybe the simplest of Naoko Yamada’s feature films, but I still think that it might be among the most beautiful ever made. This movie isn’t just a stunning one because of how Yamada keeps everything so simple, but it’s a movie that allows you to feel the sense of longing in a world where you can’t properly express it. A rewatch of this movie has only certified it as being among my favourite anime films, because it’s a movie that captures how such longing only gets repressed by conservative social standards.
#5: Platoon (1986, Oliver Stone)
It’s been a long while since I had last seen Platoon, but it’s also a much more difficult film than I feel I’d given it credit for over the years. Being a movie written and directed by a Vietnam War veteran about his experiences, Oliver Stone doesn’t pull any punches when showing how the American side of the Vietnam War might not have been all that heroic. And he’s in a position where he’s reckoning with the damages that he’s become part of, and what it feels like to carry that burden. In particular, it’s a scene where the soldiers raid a Vietnamese village that ends up becoming one of the film’s most harrowing moments, because it shows how American imperialism puts people in such a position where they end up thinking of human beings as something lesser—watching it is just so heartbreaking, especially in light of what’s happening in Gaza right now.
The Complete Day-by-Day Log
First time watches are denoted with bold text. Scores are on an out of five star basis.
Friday
Breakfast of Champions (1999, Alan Rudolph) - ✯✯✯½
Duckweed (1981, Edward Yang) - ✯✯✯½
Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Totally F***ed Up (1993, Gregg Araki) - ✯✯✯✯½
Saturday
Liz and the Blue Bird (2018, Naoko Yamada) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025, Dan Trachtenberg) - ✯✯✯½
Magic Farm (2025, Amalia Ulman) - ✯✯✯
28 Weeks Later (2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo) - ✯✯✯✯
Sunday
Closet Monster (2015, Stephen Dunn) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Martha (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) - ✯✯✯✯½
The Garden (1990, Derek Jarman) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Blue (1993, Derek Jarman) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Monday
Can’t Stop the Music (1980, Nancy Walker) - ✯✯½
Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Bring Her Back (2025, Danny and Michael Philippou) - ✯✯✯½
Tuesday
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993, François Girard) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Lili Marleen (1981, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) - ✯✯✯✯
Karate Kid: Legends (2025, Jonathan Entwistle) - ✯✯½
Effi Briest (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) - ✯✯✯✯, watched on 35mm
Misericordia (2024, Alain Guiraudie) - ✯✯✯✯
Wednesday
The Others (2001, Alejandro Amenábar) - ✯✯✯✯✯
Project A: Part II (1987, Jackie Chan) - ✯✯✯✯½
Flower (2017, Max Winkler) - ✯½
Materialists (2025, Celine Song) - ✯✯✯✯
Thursday
Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl (2016, A.D. Calvo) - ✯✯✯
Cute Devil (1982, Nobuhiko Obayashi) - ✯✯✯✯
Việt and Nam (2024, Trương Minh Quý) - ✯✯✯✯½
Platoon (1986, Oliver Stone) - ✯✯✯✯½
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